"about 22 percent ??? of the inmates in his jail on any given day are suffering from a mental disorder."

and the definition of "mental disorder" is? You could just as easily say 100% are suffering from a mental disorder, depending on how you choose define mental disorder.

The DSM has a pretty good definition of mental illness.

I'm not sure what you mean by "alleged" mental illness. Consider yourself very lucky that you or your loved ones have not been touched by this scourge. I promise you, no one who truly suffers from mental illness celebrates it. It's awful.

littletonguy wrote:Well, in order for this to be valid, you'd need to operationalize "mental illness." Second, you'd need to cite studies that support this silly notion.

Well I am not writing an academic paper here and nor is the DP a peer reviewed journal in which that sort of thing is a requirement.

I mean, you just spout off as though everything you say is true, but you offer no scientific support for it.

Sure, because from where I stand this is fairly common knowledge and follows a priori from what we already know about Conservatives and Progressives.

For instance, from the known difference in Openness to Experience between Progressives and Conservatives, we know that creativity cannot be far behind since OtE and Creativity are also known to be highly correlated. Haidt and McCrae have both been over this ground before, and there is plenty of literature out there.

The link between Creativity and Neuroticism and several of the DSM codes is also fairly broadly known.

The link between Purity/Sanctity and both Conservatism and fear of contamination is also well known. It doesn't take much of a leap to get from high scores on those to who has the highest likelihood of OCD with regards to contamination.

You, like most Republicans, need a course in critical reasoning. As it stands, this is just silly nonsense -- which may have entertainment value, but has no scientific validity. Pure nonsense.

I think what that boils down to is that you don't like it so now you are trying to find dispositional causes. I am not a Republican, I have had many years of critical thinking training and my work involves buckets of it - ranging from first-order logic to predicate calculus to non-monotonic and defeasible logic to statistical sampling, descriptive stats, regression and hypothesis testing and experimental design.

So although I may well be bad at this stuff, it isn't all that likely given the evidence.

So lets rather get down to why you find this implausible and which parts of it stick sideways - perhaps we can dig up some papers and experiments for those bits.

Let me respond first that your "many years of critical thinking training" is not in evidence here. Second, where your claim that your assumptions follow apriori from what we already know, is just bunk. In fact, from a scientific perspective, your whole response is bunk.

What you might legitimately say is that you BELIEVE that your assumptions are true. You don't offer ANY evidence. You don't offer ANY data. You don't offer ANY studies. In short, you offer NOTHING except your half-baked opinions. You throw around a lot of jargon here, but none of it applies to the point. The claim that the DP is "not a peer review journal" is unrelated to my comments. You made some claims, I called them silly and asked for sources. You STILL have provided nothing but your opinions. I don't know who you work for or what you do, but if critical reasoning and science is part of it, you are cheating your employer.

Look, I'm sure are a nice, well-meaning person. You are clearly not doing science here. Period.

littletonguy wrote:Let me respond first that your "many years of critical thinking training" is not in evidence here.

So you say.

Second, where your claim that your assumptions follow apriori from what we already know, is just bunk. In fact, from a scientific perspective, your whole response is bunk.

If you say so.

What you might legitimately say is that you BELIEVE that your assumptions are true.

Nope, I have no belief in this, I am merely stating the current thinking on the matter from the research and papers I have seen.

You made some claims, I called them silly and asked for sources. You STILL have provided nothing but your opinions.

No, you called them silly etc. but didn't actually ask for sources.At this point I don't yet know what precisely you are arguing since you haven't gone beyond just saying it's nonsense, silly, bunk, etc.

When you can find the words to frame an actual response, I am happy to explore with you whatever point you wish to contest.

Look, I'm sure are a nice, well-meaning person. You are clearly not doing science here. Period.

How very kind of you to say so, and indeed, this is "discussion" not science.

The next President needs to be Scientifically Literate - support a Science Debate for all Candidates